Tableau opens a data centre in Dublin

American business intelligence and analytics company Tableau opened its first data centre in Europe, the media reported on Wednesday.

The centre, located in Dublin, Ireland, was created following pressures by customers regarding the Safe Harbour agreement which was recently ruled invalid. Customers have asked that their data, stored in the cloud, be located somewhere within the EU.

James Eiloart, VP of Tableau’s European operations, said: “With the opening of our European datacentre, we are responding to a desire from customers to choose where they host their data.”

He told Cloud Pro: “Data protection and security are extremely important to our customers and to Tableau. We are committed to helping our customers around the world see and understand their data and as such, we want to think globally to offer more choice for our customers about where they wish to store their data.”

The Safe Harbour agreement, which was ruled invalid in September 2015, guaranteed EU citizens that their data would be treated equally both in the continent, and in the US.

However, once the agreement was disputed and reached the European Court of Justice, it was ruled that “once personal data is transferred to the United States, the NSA and other United States security agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are able to access it in the course of a mass and indiscriminate surveillance.”

A new version of the agreement is currently in the works, and the deadline for the draft is January 31 2016.